


Stasis in Darkness

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s07e10 Sein Und Zeit, Friendship/Love, Minor Character Death, POV First Person, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 07:32:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5906380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder considers the life and death of his family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stasis in Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> “And now I  
> Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.  
> The child’s cry
> 
> Melts in the wall.  
> And I  
> Am the arrow,
> 
> The dew that flies  
> Suicidal, at one with the drive  
> Into the red
> 
> Eye, the cauldron of morning.” –Sylvia Plath, Ariel

I remember the days when my mother was the most beautiful woman on  
earth. She was more beautiful than Marilyn Monroe, more glamorous than  
Jackie Kennedy, a better mom than June Cleaver– and I loved her with  
all my heart. Of course, it didn’t last. When I was sent to therapy as  
part of the divorce settlement, I hated her more than I ever hated my  
father. She became the castrating bitch-goddess of Freud’s wet dreams,  
never letting me free of her tentacles to be a man. Then, as I grew  
older, I lost her. There wasn’t any more bitterness, just an echoing  
chasm of indifferent distance neither of us ever chose to bridge.

But there was a time– maybe just a once upon a time– where I imagine I  
loved my mother fiercely. Maybe I still did, up until that night when  
Samantha disappeared and the world I thought was so safe was shattered  
into a million tiny pieces. Then again, I could be projecting. That’s  
the problem with memory– it’s subject to the ever-changing whirlpool of  
the human mind. What I remember may not be how it happened. I know that  
better than most.

The idea that she’s dead, gone forever, makes my stomach ache. I want to  
believe that there was a time when things weren’t cold and dead between  
us. I want to believe, our silences notwithstanding, that somewhere  
within she was still the beautiful woman of my childhood, smiling for  
the Hi-8, telling Samantha and me to look at the camera. I desperately  
want her to be someone I can call “mother” without having to ache with  
regret every time I think of her.

My life, it seems, is nothing but an elegy of regret for the women who  
didn’t stay with me, who stared at me with icy eyes and refused to  
explain anything. I’ve learned through their cool faces and eloquent  
silences that the world owes me nothing and that all answers must be  
paid for in blood and sorrow. My mother was the first one to teach me  
that lesson, but she wasn’t the last by any means.

All the women I’ve loved have been like my mother. They all share her  
iciness, her secretive nature. Until Scully, they all looked like her,  
too. Diana, Phoebe– all the way back to Jessica McCabe in high school,  
they were all echoes of the first woman in my life. They, like her,  
called me Fox, and when they left me, their voices mirrored her  
disapproval.

_How could you, Fox?_

_I can’t believe you, Fox._

_Fox, just be quiet. I don’t want to talk anymore._

My name became an instrument of my mother’s revenge. I grew to hate it,  
and when I saw red-haired, blue-eyed, ice cream and steel Scully, I  
couldn’t stand to hear her voice bite across the single syllable of my  
name the same way it sliced my theories to shreds. She could tell me  
that aliens were all in my head and that there were no such things as  
werewolves or government conspiracies in that voice, but I didn’t want  
to hear my name, dripping with the acid of maternal love, on her lips. I  
created a false distance from Scully so that she didn’t have to be  
another incarnation of my mother.

And in the end, Scully hasn’t been my mother. When I’ve needed her, even  
at the worst moments, she has been with me, the way my mother never was.  
She even did the autopsy and uncovered all of my mother’s secrets  
because I asked her to. She revealed the things that were hidden, the  
truth that I shouldn’t have needed– or even wanted– to know.

Scully’s hands became the agents of my desire, of my need to reveal  
every mystery. I couldn’t leave the truth as simple truth. I had to go  
deeper, lay everything bare. I’ve taken my friend, my only friend, into  
the darkest places in my mind and she has followed me. Perhaps it’s  
poetic justice that the truth that she uncovered for me is this painful.

My mother killed herself like Sylvia Plath, when it would not do  
anymore. She turned on the gas after all the pills, and I can imagine  
her in the kitchen with black sweet blood mouthfuls. Death must have  
seemed a release, the best of a bad situation. She couldn’t wait  
anymore, perhaps because she could see her skin flaking away, dry,  
unmourned by anyone, doomed to suffer for all her sins. She killed  
herself because it seemed to be the fastest and cleanest way to die. And  
now she’s gone.

“Mulder,” and my name that is not my name hums in the air. Scully is  
with me. “Do you want something to eat? Something to drink, maybe?”

“No. I don’t drink, not really. Because– that was how they handled  
things, my mother and father,” I reply, the words sounding confessional  
in the cold, empty air. “A drink or five and the world stopped hurting.  
I can’t do that. I can’t. No offense.”

The air is silent again, and I wonder if she’s angry.

“I was actually thinking more along the lines of coffee,” Scully replies  
softly. “It’s cold. You’ve had a hard day. It’ll help.”

Scully has helped me too much today. She was the one who peeled away my  
mother’s dead hands and dead stringencies, opened up her body, and all  
for me. It was against protocol, but she did it for me. I should have  
known better. I did know better, but my good judgement has never stopped  
me from being blinded with the overwhelming desire to know.

Now Scully sits here beside me with the same hands that wielded the  
scalpel and held the tape recorder that discovered and recorded the  
facts of my mother’s death. I stare at them, fascinated with the thought  
those hands uncovered my mother.

“Mulder?”

“Yes?”

“Do you want coffee?” she asks, her voice weary.

“I don’t have any here,” I reply. Her face takes on a shadow of a smile,  
as if my lack of supplies is to be expected. My friend knows me too  
well. I don’t want to be prepared. Maybe it’s because I never really  
grew up. Maybe all of my quirks are the defense mechanisms of a little  
boy who wants his mother to love him.

“We’ll get some,” she tells me. “It’s all right.”

“Scully?” I ask. “Do you love me?”

Her face is gentle, blurred into softness with the light. She squeezes  
the tips of my fingers and her hand is warm. “Of course I do,” she says  
very simply. “And so did your mother.”

“I didn’t ask you that.”

“You didn’t need to.”

“I used to think she was the most beautiful woman on earth,” I say  
lamely. My voice sounds like a child’s, pathetically recalling the past  
to cover my sins. “I keep thinking that this is impossible. How did it  
get like this, Scully?”

“I don’t know, Mulder,” she says. “I really don’t. It’s a mystery to all  
of us.”

She strokes my hand gently, and for a second my world is centered there,  
knowing that Scully loves me, despite my flaws. It’s a safe kind of  
feeling, belonging to a world of hot chocolate and flannel pajamas and  
deep sleeps that lead to pleasant dreams. This is my best friend, and  
she loves me. My mother is dead and I don’t know what she thought of me  
when she died, but I still have someone.

“Mulder, let’s go,” she says, standing up and tugging at my hand. “Let’s  
get something to warm us up. You need it.”

“I wish I had called her. I wish–”

“It hurts when you don’t know,” Scully murmurs. “I remember when my dad  
died, it killed me because I didn’t know what he thought and when you  
wish for just a minute, five minutes to set things right– time seems so  
long and so short at the same time.”

“Only a minute,” I whisper. “If I only had a minute.”

I could have saved her. She wanted to tell me something, suicide or not.  
I could have changed the world with almost no time at all. If I had done  
anything at all, my mother would not be dead. In the end, our silence  
killed her.

“Everyone has those minutes, Mulder,” Scully tells me. “I could tell you  
that it’ll be all right, but you know that it hurts. Regret hurts like a  
son of a bitch and we both know that. You loved your mom, and it’s going  
to hurt for a long time.”

Her hand is still around mine, warm and safe. I look up at this woman,  
the person I know better than I’ve ever known anyone. If anyone else had  
said that, I would have felt worse. But somehow, hearing the truth from  
Scully is a thousand times better than hearing comfort from anyone else.  
It’s honest. It’s from the heart of someone I truly love. That makes it  
strangely comforting. My mother’s death hurt me and she died with  
unfinished business. There are too many things I’ll never know about my  
mother. But that’s the truth, when all is said and done.

I finally stand up, holding Scully’s hand tight.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Of course, Mulder,” she says gently.

My mother is dead. My sister may never be found. But I have the hope of  
truth and I have Scully. That’s enough for this night, enough to get me  
to tomorrow. Tomorrow will be another story, but it’s one that can take  
care of itself. I have to get through tonight first, and as hard as it  
will be, I will not do it alone.

 


End file.
